I want to change all occurrences of point 14 of a font with point 10. I did a search/replace. For search, I simply indicated the format “14 pts”, and for replace, I simply indicated the format “10 pts”. It seemed to work like a charm – until I saw that the new size was actually appearing in dialogues and the font size box as “9.7 pt”. When I attempted to search for a font size of “9.7”, I got an error message that this could not be found.
What’s going on?
Please upload your ODF type sample file here.
And please use the Styles instead of the manual (direct) formatting method.
Writer is not meant for manual formatting. Styles is THE method to convey the importance you give to your text. Once you have annotated your text with styles, you can configure their typographical attributes. Everything is controlled from a single location: the style definition.
Read the freely downloadable Writer Guide for an introduction to styles. Paragraph styles give a general significance to paragraphs. Character styles override this significance for specific words (characters). Page styles define the geometry of the pages. There are other style categories but, as a beginner, start with these.
Just replaced a few directly formatted portions with 14 pt surrounded by 12 pt, and replaced the size with 10 pt for the fimdings. It workede as expected. No chance, imo, to find a cause for your issues without having a document at hand which shows it for you.
The one general thing: Very strange effects are sometimes caused by a corrupted user profile.
I see by these answers that I wasn’t specific enough.
I have a style called Text Body, with 10 pt Cambria. I pasted a text from Gutenberg.org and used the Text Body style. Some paragraphs responded properly. All the paragraphs that behaved peculiarly either had (1) curly quotes at the very beginning of the paragraph (i.e., not typewriter-style quotes); (2) a footnote reference. In the case of #1, the curly quote changed to 10 pt; the rest of the text stayed at 14 pt. I can correct the problem with cntl-M (Clear Direct Formatting), but that also destroys all the italics and bolding in the original text. Which is why I tried to use the find/replace. And instead of changing 14 to 10 pt, it changed it to 9.7.
I pasted a text from Gutenberg.org and
used the Text Body style. Some
paragraphs responded properly.
Always use the “paste as Unformatted text” for textual contents what you want to paste from a foreign source to your document. The normal Paste function can paste some unwanted (unknown, incompatible) formatting properties.
All the paragraphs that behaved
peculiarly either had (1) curly quotes
at the very beginning of the paragraph
(i.e., not typewriter-style quotes);
Curly quotes and typewriter quotes have different character code. It is not a formatting related plroblem. You can substitute them by a simple find and replace.
I can correct the problem with cntl-M
(Clear Direct Formatting), but that
also destroys all the italics and
bolding in the original text.
This is the main reason, why it is better to use the STYLES. The properties of the Paragraph Styles and the Character Styles will not be resetted by the Ctrl-M. Only the manual (direct) formatting properties will be resetted.) Use the Paragraph Styles for formatting the whole paragraph, and then use the Character Styles for formatting small parts of the text in a specific paragraph what is formatted by a paragraph style.
Apparently I’m doing something that no one has ever done before. Let me try to be even more specific.
I have a template for texts with my own definitions of Text Body, etc. I am pasting documents from places like Gutenberg, from the HTML versions. They paste into my template with the proper font. This is not the problem. The problem is that under certain circumstances the size is pasted as 14 pt instead of the size I want (10 pt). That includes when the first character of the paragraph is a curly quote; the curly quote is pasted as 10 pt, the rest of the paragraph at 14 pt. Even if I select the paragraph and apply my Text Body style, the size does not change. I can get the rest of the paragraph at 10 pt by using cntl-M, but then all the italics are also lost.
Pasting unformatted also destroys all the italics. And the original text does not have separate character formatting. The only quick recourse I saw was to replace 14pt with 10pt, and thence to my original question.